Travel Specialist Develops a Buddy System for Seniors on Vacation
Skift Take
Senior travel is a lucrative and growing segment, but many seniors stay home because they don’t want to go solo. A travel advisor’s new matching site for seniors may be a modest solution.
Pat Hager had built a successful second career focusing on senior travel, but then ran into a challenge: her aging clientele was increasingly hesitant to book vacations because they had no one to travel with.
“When I got into the travel business a dozen years ago, a lot of my business came from my friends,” said Hager, owner of Where to Next Travel in Escondido, California. “As we got older together, the dynamic started to change. Their spouses and friends passed away and some could no longer travel easily. There were cancellations.”
Even those who could travel alone, often did not want to pay the hefty single supplements required on most tours and cruises. Increasingly, clients began asking Hager if she could find them someone to travel with.
“I told them I’m a travel agent and that’s not what I do,” she said. “But I got on online and tried to find a service that would help them. Some of the travel matching sites I looked into were really more like dating sites. I did find a few site
